Culture Clash On The Prairie

Reader Leslie Fain sent this Washington Post piece in. It came out last fall, but I missed it. It’s a haunting portrait of the race and class divide in America, which is, at its heart, a cultural chasm that seems irresolvable.

It tells the story of a poor black family from New Orleans, displaced by Katrina and settled in a small Nebraska town that welcomed them with open arms. But things went badly wrong for the family there. Excerpts:

The town of Auburn, population 3,200, had provided them with a car, a four-bedroom house, job leads and free medical checkups. The Ladies Club stopped by with homemade casseroles. Goodwill delivered jeans and pearl-snap shirts.

“You’re one of us now,” a city councilman had written to them, even though no one else in Auburn was black, Southern, urban and poor. “We’re a close community that leaves no one behind in a time of need. You’ll be taken care of here.”

In the days after Hurricane Katrina, this was what Auburn wanted to believe of itself, and what so many Americans wanted to believe of their own communities, too.

A decade later, the councilman’s note was at the bottom of a closet, buried underneath the paperwork of what the Williamses’ time in Nebraska had become: police reports, doctor’s bills, grievance letters to the NAACP and dozens of collection notices. They owed the city for water, gas, trash collection and school supplies. They owed $15,000 to the hospital for Troy’s first round of cancer treatments, which he was supposed to be getting every week but instead was receiving only every three months at a clinic in Lincoln that had agreed to give him infrequent treatments at no charge.

“This matter concerning the Williams’ family has exhausted our patience,” read one bill, for $60, from an appointment to check Troy’s blood levels.

“We cannot and do not operate as a charity,” read another.

More:

How quickly had some people in town started expecting them to leave? How suddenly had so much generosity begun to unravel? During their third week in Auburn, the dealership had replaced their new Expedition with a used minivan, explaining that the Expedition had been a short-term loan. During the fifth week, their oldest son had been sent home from school for wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt. “A drug culture we don’t embrace here,” the administrator’s note had read. During the seventh week, the city had asked them to start paying rent on the four-bedroom house, $520 a month, which they couldn’t afford on Troy’s salary as a machine operator. During their eighth week, vandals had carved “Niggers” into the Halloween pumpkins on their front porch, and they had gone for the first time to see the police.

The community newspaper published all police activity each week in a section called “The Docket,” and soon the Williams family had become regulars. There was Andrea, ticketed for speeding 7 mph over the limit. There was Troy for failing to pay the trash. There was Troy again for driving under the influence, his first offense.

Troy got three more DUIs.

A 27 year old nephew, Smoky, moved in with them; he fled New Orleans after being shot in a dispute, and fearing that the shooter was going to try to finish the job. Smoky immediately started causing trouble. He couldn’t hold a job:

He’d been fired from his first job at a car dealership for what he remembered the manager describing as “cultural differences,” and then from a downtown cafe for flirting with the waitresses, and then from a barbecue restaurant for “aggressively talking back.” Now he was starting his fourth job, at Casey’s General, where he had applied to work in food prep but was instead being trained to wash floors and unload delivery trucks.

“They’re acting like I can’t wrap a sandwich,” he said now. “I keep telling them I went to culinary school, but they don’t listen.”

“See, that right there is why we don’t associate,” Troy said. “The more you try to explain and interact in this town, the worse it gets.”

“Don’t say nothing to them,” Andrea said.

“But I’m a social person,” Smoky said. “I’m just trying to show them how their thinking is backwards.”

The most neutral thing you can say about Smoky’s attitude towards his employers is that he has a problem with authority.

Here’s the thing: their kids seem to love it there. One of their daughters, Tierra, arrived in town as a barely literate fifth grader, and is now a star college athlete.

She was also the first to lose her Southern accent, to correct her parents’ grammar and to say what they rarely said: that she liked living in Auburn. She liked the town and loved the people, so much so that sometimes she chose to stay with friends instead of going on the family’s occasional trips back to New Orleans. Her college boyfriend was German. Her best friend lived in Spain. And even though Troy and Andrea referred to her success as an example of what was possible for their other children — even though they preserved each one of her certificates and news clippings in a folder labeled “Way to go Tierra!” — the way she credited those accomplishments sometimes hurt.

“This town basically saved my life,” she said now, in the living room.

There’s an anecdote her folks tell about how they went to a high school football game and cheered so loud that people told them to settle down. They cite this as evidence of racism. Tierra tells the reporter, though, that her folks (or at least her dad) would drink whiskey before the games, and yell so much that she moved away from them in the bleachers.

The clincher moment in the piece is when Smoky gets sent home from work for not obeying his boss’s instructions to use American cheese on the sandwiches he was making instead of provolone. He concedes that he disobeyed, but insists that he knew better than the boss.

Most people would say, “Smoky, you can’t disobey your boss, tell your boss he’s wrong, and expect to keep a job. What is wrong with you? This keeps happening.” It’s just plain common sense. Cause and effect.

But that’s not how Aunt Andrea reacts:

“I bet they did it on purpose. They’re setting you up for a fall,” she said, and then she stomped out her cigarette and started walking up the road toward Casey’s with Smoky trailing behind her.

What’s so interesting about this piece is it reveals that this family really does have it hard (e.g., the landlord who doesn’t keep their Section 8 apartment decently), but more than anything else, it shows that the family is culturally deficient. They believe the world owes them, and are not willing to take responsibility for themselves. Their college-age daughter Tierra tells her parents to stop blaming everybody else for their problems and take responsibility for themselves. They tell her she’s acting white.

That final act, the clincher, explains so much. The troublemaker Smoky cannot keep a job, and he keeps losing his jobs for the same reason: insubordination. But his mother figure, Andrea, blames other people. Racists, setting Smoky up to fail.

What does society owe to this family? What does this family owe to society? I can easily imagine what a culture shock it is to go from living in New Orleans to living out on the Nebraska prairie. Hell, I live in a Louisiana town half the size of Auburn, Nebraska, and I can imagine I would find it hard to adjust to life there. South Louisiana is culturally a very different place. But good grief, when everything you have has been taken from you, and there are people who are very different from you, but who are offering you a chance to start over, you do what you have to do to make it work. Tierra did, and she’s soaring. Her mother and father are going to always be living chaotically, blaming others for their problems. The fault for their condition is primarily within themselves. No doubt they did encounter racism, but if racism was the primary reason the family was stuck in poverty after a decade, how do they account for their daughter Tierra’s thriving?

At least that’s how I interpret this story. What do you think? Leaving race aside, to what extent do you think this story sheds light on how personal culture causes poverty, or at least stands in the way of rising out of it?

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99 Responses to Culture Clash On The Prairie

Cause and Effect: Alcoholism of the father. Low wages for gainful employment (really? a MACHINIST doesn’t get paid enough to pay a rent that low? His employer should be ashamed of himself). A honest telling of what was going to done to help them and for how long instead of just taking things back or then billing them. Hard-headed/stubborn/insubordinate attitude of nephew.

What are people like this owed (without bringing up race)? A free education and free medical care (yeah, yeah, I know nothing’s free, but if you want a free society educate people and don’t let them go to the poorhouse over medical conditions).

As a Louisiana girl who has transplanted to the Midwest, I can tell you that the culture shock is real. Like this family, I am often considered a tad too loud or too outspoken or rocking the boat too much by my Midwestern friends. If I felt it regardless of being white, educated, and middle class in a college town, I can only imagine what it was like for this family in a much smaller rural town.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Midwest and was excited to move here. It lacks many of the dysfunctions of Louisiana. My state is known for taking in immigrant and refugee populations and is perhaps better at it than this small Nebraska town. But those populations are expected to assimilate to the mores of the community almost immediately. While they can keep their language and cultural traditions, they learn fast that it is necessary to work hard and keep your head down and couch any controversy inside a compliment. Otherwise, you’ll get frozen out.

We must have read different articles. I read one about a man who kept working even tho he had cancer, a man who wants to work even tho he keeps clashing with bosses, and a town that shames people if they drive over 7 miles over the limit. You could find any number of white methheads in Nebraska – its US ground zero for meth. Yr assumption that they’re the only poor struggling trapped and sometimes self defeating family in that state or even that town is absurd.
Still it allows you to tut tut about black people

[NFR: Oh, hush. There are white people who live the same way, who have the same mindset. As I have said, and as we have talked about in this forum, e.g., when I posted Kevin Williamson’s Appalachia article. But this allows you to tut tut about racism. It’s so boring and vapid. — RD]

Refusing to put American cheese on the sandwiches because you know perfectly well that provolone is better and your boss is an idiot — that sounds exactly like something that my well-behaved, private-school-educated, Asian-American daughter would do. And while as her mother I would let her know that she should pay attention to what her boss tells her to do, the fact is that she probably wouldn’t get fired for it and certainly people wouldn’t be saying online that she was a hopeless case who deserved whatever she got. She would get the benefit of the doubt and be granted the right to have her own opinion. That’s exactly what low-level racism means in practice.

[NFR: Are you serious? If I was the boss and your kid did that, I would warn her. And if she did it again, I would fire her so fast — and she would deserve it. — RD]

All right, all right. Provolone is better. It’s a sad thing to say, but our cheese industry is in such bad shape; terrible shape under Vilsack. Our cheese industry doesn’t win anymore. We just don’t. When is the last time our cheese won anything? Monterey Jack? When was that, the 1900’s? We don’t win anymore. But let me just say, under a Smoky office we are going to win again to win so much you are all going to be sick of home-made Roquefort eating, ok?

But, if seriously, who pays for using more expensive cheeses when making ordinary sandwiches? Smoky?

I was born and raised in CA, but both of my parents are from Nebraska and of German ancestry. My parents are fantastic, salt of the earth people, but they are way uptight compared to most African Americans I know. Who ever thought that dropping a poor, black family from New Orleans into a small Nebraskan town, should have had his/her head examined.I’m no genius, but I could have told you that this would not work. The cultures and world views are just too different.

Refusing to put American cheese on the sandwiches because you know perfectly well that provolone is better and your boss is an idiot — that sounds exactly like something that my well-behaved, private-school-educated, Asian-American daughter would do. And while as her mother I would let her know that she should pay attention to what her boss tells her to do, the fact is that she probably wouldn’t get fired for it and certainly people wouldn’t be saying online that she was a hopeless case who deserved whatever she got. She would get the benefit of the doubt and be granted the right to have her own opinion. That’s exactly what low-level racism means in practice.

Rod is right. I’d fire your daughter too. When I say “No, it has to be American”, I’m not doing it because I like the sound of my voice. I’m doing it because that’s what the menu is and she has to produce what’s on the menu. I’m not going to keep paying someone who doesn’t follow instructions. They’ll cause me more problems than they’ll solve. After all, her job isn’t “pick the right cheese.” Her job is “put this cheese on that bun”.

“Refusing to put American cheese on the sandwiches because you know perfectly well that provolone is better and your boss is an idiot — that sounds exactly like something that my well-behaved, private-school-educated, Asian-American daughter would do…the fact is that she probably wouldn’t get fired for it and certainly people wouldn’t be saying online that she was a hopeless case who deserved whatever she got. She would get the benefit of the doubt and be granted the right to have her own opinion. That’s exactly what low-level racism means in practice.”

I wish your daughter well in the job market. You and she have a shocking amount to learn about the work world where I strongly suspect she will meet with some painful and disappointing experiences.

I’m driven to the conclusion that the generosity wasn’t for real in the first place. Was it a show for an audience, or just to make themselves feel good?

14 days ago you can have the Expedition, no, whoops, it was only a loan, here’s a used minivan. What is the point of this?

Marketing. The dealership got good coverage with people talking about how nice a new car is. If they gave a way a used minivan, they actually did donate several thousand to the family so it wasn’t evil, just poorly communicated.

Troy’s first DUI was in this Nebraska town. No previous offenses. Was this the stress taking its toll?

Stuck in some mountain town, I would be in heaven. Stuck in Nebraska, I would take to drinking heavily very quickly. I can see moving from a city to a small town being a huge stressor.

Also to all of the people saying Provolone is better. It doesn’t matter. Menu’s have been printed, regular customers know what they like. You make what people ordered, which is what is on the menu.

So we have a guy being fired for serial insubordination, and it’s considered racist because everyone knows that provolone is superior to American cheese. Sounds like we have some Italian nationalist in here. You bunch of bigots!

Refusing to put American cheese on the sandwiches because you know perfectly well that provolone is better and your boss is an idiot — that sounds exactly like something that my well-behaved, private-school-educated, Asian-American daughter would do. And while as her mother I would let her know that she should pay attention to what her boss tells her to do, the fact is that she probably wouldn’t get fired for it…

Have you or your daughter ever actually worked in food service, or any other menial, low-wage job?

Because if you had, you’d know very well that when the boss tells you to do something, you do it, and if you don’t do it, you can expect consequences. So if you want to keep your job, you do what the boss tells you, even if you’re convinced the boss is wrong.

The boss may well be an idiot – and you can quit in a huff if you like. But it’s not some injustice when you, in effect, flip the boss the bird and he fires you. Own your behavior – own the consequences.

It’s a sad thing to say, but our cheese industry is in such bad shape; terrible shape under Vilsack. Our cheese industry doesn’t win anymore. We just don’t. When is the last time our cheese won anything?

First, if you think that the Sec of Agriculture is the prime factor in the success or failure of the cheese industry, you vastly overestimate the commitment of the United States to socialist economics, AND, you do a disservice to the free enterprise and entrepreneurial skills of those in the cheese industry.

Second, while I didn’t clip the article, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently reported on a local cheese that won first place over-all in a highly competitive and high prestige international competition. Ah, here we are:

Who ever thought that dropping a poor, black family from New Orleans into a small Nebraskan town, should have had his/her head examined.I’m no genius, but I could have told you that this would not work. The cultures and world views are just too different.

No, they’re not. The success of the older children refutes the notion that “this would not work.” But, it would have been helpful if the agencies that arranged the placement had provided someone to follow up and facilitate the necessary cross-cultural communication. I live such communication every day, I know its feasible. I know the healthy aspirations of black families and the cultural divides that can be obstacles. It would have taken a little more work to make it all work.

I read one about a man who kept working even tho he had cancer, a man who wants to work even tho he keeps clashing with bosses, and a town that shames people if they drive over 7 miles over the limit.

Without tut-tutting over racism or fixation on race or all that rot, these are valid points.

As a Louisiana girl who has transplanted to the Midwest, I can tell you that the culture shock is real. Like this family, I am often considered a tad too loud or too outspoken or rocking the boat too much by my Midwestern friends.

As I’ve said before, a lot of what divides black populations from northern whites is that the black cultures are so SOUTHERN.

I’m guessing in this case that it’s a nice way of saying “forklift driver” which in a very rural area=$10 an hour or so. I don’t KNOW that’s the case here, but I would say it’s probable.

I would too… which again raises the question, why is this family being blamed for not being able to pay the bills on $10 an hour. I had to scrimp to sustain my lone self on that hourly wage.

Is Smokey a victim of racism?

A: No.

Fair point, although peripheral to the general family experience.

I didn’t sabotage myself or my dependents by insubordination. I sucked it up. — RD

You should have organized a union. I benefited greatly at one job from the fact that a few years before my time, some of my fellow employees had done exactly that.

You know what? There has been an awful lot of piling on about Smokey’s insubordination. And while this may be fair comment, it seems to have become a kind of anodyne, using this rather peripheral issue to dull the sense toward any more substantive discussion of the entire family experience.

Rod, you’re really disturbed by racism, and would dearly love to believe it doesn’t exist any more. So any time a story like this comes up, you really, really want to find some other reason for why things went bad for the black people. Their culture is deficient, or they didn’t work hard enough. Sometimes that’s the case, but often racism impacts the situation.

[NFR: Oh, this again. Look, if that story had been about poor whites who behaved that way, I would have written on it. Sorry that the Washington Post didn’t find a dysfunctional family who had an ethnicity that would have allowed you to see clearly how their actions affect their prospects for getting out of poverty. — RD]

Growing up in rural Indiana and having jobs in which I travel the state I have seen some interesting cultural anamolies. Many rural gas stations have foreign owners, indians (sikhs) and recent African immigrants. They seem to be making a go of it. In my hometown the Latino population came as field workers in the 90s and now my hometown of 19,000 has 4 or 5 Mexican restaurants and the people love them.

These people came poor but worked insane hours and made it. My father, a teacher, said he had many new Latino immigrant children and while they struggled with poverty and english their parents cared and pushed the children for better. They were model parents for success while many long time poor white residents complained about cops, teachers, and government.

Different cultures teach different values and they usually find each other to live amongst for better or worse. I am sure the white Nebraskans aren’t rich but they have standards and ways they would expect anyone to follow who came in from outside. They honor those who make those attempts.

This isn’t color but culture. It is not a destiny to failure like Terra shows but it seems she also made decisions and ingratiated herself with those who would be positive influences and she gives back to them with her visits and success.

I think for the generationally poor we have to understand where they derive from and realize that may simply be the lot in life. Appalachia has had successful kids leave and do great things but their long time cultural indentities, such as why did their ancestors move to a portion of the country with little agricultural promise and few other opportunties? It’s because it was where they came from in their home coutries, the Highlands of Scotland and settlements in northern Ireland.

For American blacks this resettlement wasn’t historically by choice in the first generations and that resentment has lingered.

Now simply looking at white groups in Indiana where some towns have been mostly settled by the Appalachian groups from 1800 up to the migrations of workers in WW1 and 2, those towns still struggle in jobs, schools, socioeconomic status. In towns where middle class new Englander’s or germans settled have more prosperity and business development. It is an easy observation if you know your migration patterns. Whites, black, latinos, indians, etc all have their previous cultures developed over thousands of years in their previous localities and those cultures don’t deviate and change a great deal, the world around changes and the government of progress believes all can find that great level. It is simple fallacy, but the question is, is it worth making the effort to change those who don’t wish to seek change.

“but more than anything else, it shows that the family is culturally deficient”

—That’s a bit harsh especially for someone often policing for un-PC language in his comments sections. There is an issue with personal responsibility to a degree, sure. But it also sounds like they entered a Midwestern Scandinavian cultural black hole. Just like Swedes with Afghani migrants, they might welcome them with open arms but they don’t generally integrate them and treat them condescendingly when they have to interact with them at all. Basically, they’re confused by how different they are, often after having spent most of their own lives considering their own culture superior in values to the “racist” South. The younger ones are different because they grew up there, but I bet they are not only correcting mama’s grammar but also her dialect.

When the troublemaker younger black men claim to not be able to talk to anyone about anything in that town – I would not disbelieve them. Maybe they have a problem with authority, but in part, at least, I bet they recognise authority in their own cultural context. They are probably given the Scandinavian silent treatment when they bring up concerns or ideas and expected to do many things without procedures being explained. Complaints are generally viewed as antisocial. That’s how Scandinavia works and the Midwest to a degree.

And it should be obvious they are not going to pay $15k hospital bills. I think that would be true anywhere.

As a Southern White (who has lived long-term in Norway), I sympathise with the Blacks.

As far as Smoky and the Cheese goes, I can well remember the shock when I went out to the (Canadian) Prairies from Vancouver to work as a seismic surveyor, and the horror I often felt when-eating in small-town restaurants.”Don’t you people know how a few minor changes will make this stuff so much better?” And I too was seen as some big-city smart-ass who thought he was better than the locals.

And I can see someone who’s actually been trained in this trying to “help” by upgrading the standards- and getting into clashes with his boss, and, yes, getting fired- justifiably.

If he moves on to Des Moines, or Boulder, or Kansas City, with the upswing in the econmy kicking in, he may end up in a job where he can utilize his skill and entertain his co-workers with tales of the abominations of Little Restaurant on the Prairie “And they fired me for trying to get them to provolone instead of- wait for it- American cheese!”.

Or, he may spiral down into the lower depths-either one can happen. I wouldn’t be too absolutely shocked by someone who thinks they know better being fired for clashing with their first- or second, or third bosses- it’s common enough in our biographies of Great Men.

[NFR: American cheese is not even cheese. Smoky is right about culinary matters. That, of course, is not the point. If Smoky worked at a sandwich shop in which he was told to put provolone on the sandwiches, at some point, he would do something to get himself disciplined or fired. The problem is not the cheese. The problem is Smoky’s attitude. — RD]

Rod is right. I’d fire your daughter too. When I say “No, it has to be American”, I’m not doing it because I like the sound of my voice. I’m doing it because that’s what the menu is and she has to produce what’s on the menu. I’m not going to keep paying someone who doesn’t follow instructions. They’ll cause me more problems than they’ll solve. After all, her job isn’t “pick the right cheese.” Her job is “put this cheese on that bun”.

Seconded. I’d fire your daughter quicker than she could say ‘provolone’, because the real issue here isn’t which sort of cheese is better, it’s the demonstration that she has a problem with authority. Out!

There is a kind of ‘privilege’ here, but it has nothing to do with race. I did have a mild disagreement of sorts with my boss a couple weeks ago about how to do a particular procedure. He wanted me to do it one way, I said ‘let me think about that’, then I did it my way anyway and presented him with the results when they were finished. It worked out fine my way, and it turned out his way would have probably not worked out very well, since the room we were expecting to have temperature control didn’t end up being able to control it very well. So I can get away with a reasonable amount of freedom. That’s not because of race, or anything of that nature: it has to do with class and with the nature of different jobs. I don’t have a working class or a service related job, and one of the perks of the job I have is a considerable amount of freedom. Making sandwiches and working as a scientist are two flatly different things, and in an industry like the restaurant business, where there are tons of restaurants out there all trying to compete for customer dollars, you pretty much have to follow exactly what the menu says. (This is probably a good example of why Paul Sweezy said the sales effort under late capitalism was fundamentally irrational, but that’s a separate issue).

14 days ago you can have the Expedition, no, whoops, it was only a loan, here’s a used minivan. What is the point of this?

Marketing. The dealership got good coverage with people talking about how nice a new car is.

The Other Eric, You’re probably right about the motivations here. Now I’m imagining how I would feel as the recipient.

“Poorly communicated” is part and parcel of the transaction. The dealership wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much mileage out of “they let the black family use an Expedition for two weeks and then gave them a used minivan.” The whole thing depended on the narrative being, “wow, they gave this poor family a fancy new car!”

If this is someone’s idea of a good deed I must be missing something. If the idea was to provide this family with transportation (I’m sure the local public bus system isn’t much), if you can afford to give them the Expedition, give it to them and don’t take it back; if you can’t afford or don’t want to do that, give them the used minivan up front. Either one is praiseworthy. Bait and switch is not.

I know I’m kind of stuck on this car thing, but it seems symbolic of a lot of what happened. “Good deeds” as shiny and pretty, and as shallow, as a puddle. A house that was to be affordable (or free) is suddenly, a very few weeks after scrutiny fades, financially over your head, so you run up bills on utilities trying to stay even; help with medical care turns out to mean a few free visits at the local clinic, not genuine assistance when cancer shows up; Section 8 (federal law) mandates certain behavior by the landlord, but everyone is willing to ignore that when it’s your family that is impacted.

It seems to me that from a Christian perspective, or even from a sort of common-sense perspective, there are plenty of “culture” failings on both sides of this story.

In any event, the short-lived casein coup of 2015 did not result in Smoky’s termination. He was sent home for being an idiot, giving him the opportunity to contemplate his idiocy and come back to work when he is able to behave in a less idiotic fashion. The article notes that he runs into Andrea and the reporter while walking home in the middle of work day and bemoans the racism of The Man whom he was only trying to please by offering customers a whiter cheese.

Andrea is upset, and a fine decision maker, and she reasons the best course of action would be to confront Smoky’s boss about his racism and ignorance of the quality of various cheeses. She will do this for Smokey because she hasn’t behaved dysfunctionally for all of 30 minutes and is getting the shakes. Smoky begs her to return home with him and to drop the issue. She refuses until he is finally able to convince her that the only outcome of her confrontation is that he will lose a fourth job in this small town.

So he didn’t get fired. He got a second chance (or maybe it was a third, fourth or fifth chance). But still, I’d fire that Asian kid if she did the same thing because the best thing you can do for privileged Millennials is to crush their spirit swiftly and without remorse. It’s good for them and it’s good for the country.

Some people are more resilient to abuse than others. This is the thing that a lot of people don’t get: racism is a form of abuse no different than any other. When you abuse a person, they will often show mental and emotional signs of the damage the abuse is causing. Condemning someone for displaying the signs of being abused – feeling helpless, impulse control issues, mental illness, etc – is actually really cruel. You are looking at a suffering victim of abuse and telling them that if only they would be a better victim, they wouldn’t have these problems. Even Smokie – I know young people like that. Usually they are smart and driven and they are desperate to prove themselves and gain approval, but they lack the maturity to understand how they look to others. They are so fixated on this vision they have of proving to people that they are worthy of real rather than token respect that they just can’t wrap their heads around why it seems that the harder they try, the worse their results. To reduce all of that down to a problem with authority is absurd. Aside from the fact that we have been using authority to abuse African Americans for centuries, so, yeah. It seems completely understandable that authority might be an issue. And maybe, just maybe, we should take some responsibility for accommodating that instead of being asshats who insist that people just need to get over it. You’re talking about actual human beings here, not interchangeable widgets you can use as stand ins for a variety of stereotypes. People can be broken.

I know it’s unpopular from a US Conservative standpoint. But can I make a humble, muffled, tiny-voiced, call for universal healthcare?
If I could choose just one thing that the US have definitely to import from Europe, this is the one.
Forget any social consideration, but just imagine how you would feel more comfortable and less worried in life if you knew that, no matter how broke you may get, you will always able to see a GP and to be treated in a hospital. I think that this is something, really.

First, if you think that the Sec of Agriculture is the prime factor in the success or failure of the cheese industry, you vastly overestimate the commitment of the United States to socialist economics, AND, you do a disservice to the free enterprise and entrepreneurial skills of those in the cheese industry.

Second, while I didn’t clip the article, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently reported on a local cheese that won first place over-all in a highly competitive and high prestige international competition. Ah, here we are:

Er… Have you noticed that my piece was a parody (actually a parody on a parody) on Donald’s speeches (whom I fully support, but, as a man of humor, like to see parodies on (think he likes as well). It had nothing to do neither with real quality of any cheese nor with any current or previous USDA practices. To be fair, the next paragraph of the comment you cited begins with “But, if seriously…” Which means that it was a joke up to that point.

My actual opinion is that the kid ain’t a chef of some fancy Paris restaurant for deciding what ingredients to put.

The cheese debate belongs in one of Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations tests. Conservatives rank high on Authority and Sanctity, here we have a conflict between the two (yes this is a sanctity issue, a little like the Sangria and oysters discussed some weeks back). Rod coming down on side of authority surprised (and disappointed) me. Too much more of that and Rod’s status as the leading conservative foodie will be at stake.

[NFR: Smoky was right about the inferiority of American cheese. But he needs a job. If I’m a line cook at Applebee’s and decide I don’t like the standard recipe for whatever the soup of the day is, I don’t have the right to tell the boss he’s wrong, and I’m going to make it my way. That’s just stupid. Smoky may have superior taste in cheese, but he’s a dope. — RD]

Goodness. Pretty much the only cheese my children knew about was from the Food Bank. It came wrapped in tin foil in a cardboard box. It actually made great grilled cheese sandwiches.
I’m no cheese expert, but my guess is that the quality of the provolone available to most food service probably isn’t too many steps above American cheese.

Alex, your parody was so well done that indeed I could not tell that it was written in humor. Which perhaps says more about the candidate you are devoted to, and were trying to imitate, than it does about yourself.

Forget any social consideration, but just imagine how you would feel more comfortable and less worried in life if you knew that, no matter how broke you may get, you will always able to see a GP and to be treated in a hospital. I think that this is something, really.

This is why Giuseppe Scalas is the kind of conservative I could live next door to.

Nobody is forcing these folks to live there. — RD

Trite response, and barely accurate. FEMA sent them there. How are they supposed to make their way anywhere else? I suppose nobody was FORCING them to live in New Orleans where their daughter could barely read in the 5th grade either.

I have been ticketed for going 5 mph over the limit, and I’m as white as they come.

I have been given a written warning for driving 70 mph at night on a two lane 55 mph road. My beloved passenger said this proves that police are partial to skin color, since she gets expensive tickets for far less.

Making sandwiches and working as a scientist are two flatly different things,

But Hector, in the great workers cooperative commonwealth, there will be equal dignity to both jobs, and everyone will be encouraged to develop both their intellectual and physical capacities, whether Charles Cosimano thinks you have either or neither.

and in an industry like the restaurant business, where there are tons of restaurants out there all trying to compete for customer dollars, you pretty much have to follow exactly what the menu says.

I still wonder whether Smokey was on to something that would have better met customer demand… sort of like, Hector knew the best way to run the experiment and his supervisor did not. Why was provolone even in stock for Smokey to use?

Smoky is right about culinary matters. That, of course, is not the point.

It may well be the point. Albeit, the owner of the business has the right to run the business in a stupid way, and give direction to employees, it is arrogant to assume that in another business, Smokey would have refused to use provolone. Think about it… this guy had the initiative to earn a certificate, had learned something, was proud of it, and wanted to offer it for the benefit of his employer. In another environment, he might have been a valued employee who took creative initiative and was a benefit to the business. (He does seem to have deficiencies in expressing himself effectively. How to offer a better perspective to your employer is also a learned skill.)

The cheese debate belongs in one of Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations tests. Conservatives rank high on Authority and Sanctity, here we have a conflict between the two (yes this is a sanctity issue, a little like the Sangria and oysters discussed some weeks back). Rod coming down on side of authority surprised (and disappointed) me. Too much more of that and Rod’s status as the leading conservative foodie will be at stake.

In my view that’s all about economy. Cheaper sandwiches – cheaper cheese. Don’t like it – open your own cantina and smash up as many times as you like.

I believe possibly what some mean when they talk about racism in this type of instance, isn’t racism as much as it is being unable to cope culturally, and I am not sure that the people of the town ever had it rightly in mind what to expect. As far they were concerned, they may have been welcoming a distant cousin they never knew, whom they just presumed was a cultural match. In many ways our culture is complex and complicated. And, yet, the complexity and complication are what make it and us great. The ability to accept it and deal with it – to be a part of it, is what counts. It is interesting to see how things worked for the young girl. Had she not been gifted athletically, I do wonder how things would be for her. And I hurt for the man and his cancer diagnosis. I am glad that he is getting some free treatments. That’s about all we can do sometimes. The article talks of Post Traumatic distress disorder. We hear all of this and there is no doubt some truth there, but life is difficult all over. That is one reason I think families and a family structure are/is so important and integral to our culture. We all need to have families who care and who can help us out. “Villages” are great, but a family bond is a little different.

The world is full of stories very much worse than this one. I don’t even know what the lesson of this story is in context. All I can see from it is that life is difficult and there are no guarantees.

I think about my mom who was born in the midst of the depression of this country. She was the eighth of nine children. Three years after she was born her brother was born and their mother died from complications related to that birth. These were poor people who lived in the mountains of Tennessee and who had nothing. Their dad was mid-30s suddenly left with all those kids and no money. He chose to take care of his responsibilities. He had to raise those kids. He and his sons cleared 100 acres of land of roots and stones with a mule so they could farm. They felled trees and built a home up the mountain. They found a way to pipe water from the creek up the mountain. There was a poll tax at the time. Mother’s father made sure every week that he was saving toward paying that poll tax – this was a white man – because he felt the importance of being able to participate and vote. And as long as their was a tax he paid it and voted. Mother had one dress that she would wear to school every day down to town, where the little town children would ridicule her (some anyway). And she and her siblings really did walk 5 or 6 miles to school daily regardless of the weather conditions. Their Dad wouldn’t let them miss school.

Their dad, had run away at 16 to join the fighting in World War 1. He felt it his duty to fight. He ended up in the Argonne Forest where some man who in later years was referred to as “The Major” kept an eye on him. The major realized that he was just a kid, so as much as he could he kept him out of harm’s way and taught him things that he had learned in school and college. He had him read books and taught him literature and poetry. He memorized a lot of poems and taught them to my mother as she grew up. She went on to become an inveterate reader and English teacher.

Life is difficult. The one thing we have had in this country has been a common culture – a shared meaning and understanding of what it means to be human. And we are here to work and try and sweat. We’ve tried and are trying to change our culture to something not in keeping with the human condition – and we are paying a big price in my opinion.

But Hector, in the great workers cooperative commonwealth, there will be equal dignity to both jobs, and everyone will be encouraged to develop both their intellectual and physical capacities, whether Charles Cosimano thinks you have either or neither.

That’s true. All jobs deserve equal respect. I’m not sure though, whether that means that all jobs should enjoy respect in the same way. It may be the case that some jobs should require more sacrifice of your free initiative and more submission to authority than others, just like some jobs offer you more free time than others, and some jobs offer you more human interaction than others. Working in a sandwich shop, after all, requires pretty strict adherence to rules to ensure that people don’t get sick.

That having been said, you certainly have a point, and reading the article makes me a touch more sympathetic toward Smokey (I started out being rather unsympathetic to him). His supervisor was, to say the least, undiplomatic, and making him re-make the sandwiches with American cheese was sort of ridiculous. How different are American and provolone, really?

There’s certainly fault to go around on both sides here. Speeding 7 miles over the limit is still breaking the law however. Drunk driving is breaking the law at an even more serious level. Being fired for ‘flirting with waitresses’ sounds unlikely in the extreme, as literally stated, and it’s either a euphemism for one of two things: either racism (Smokey got fired for something that a white person would never get fired for), or else ‘flirting’ here is a euphemism for unwelcome harassment. I don’t know which of the two is the case, and neither do you.

When you have a nearly 100% town of a thousand, you can afford a Smoky to get a Tiera. When you have a 75% white, 25% black town of similar size, you can’t. Hence the Southern Solution — or for that matter the Northern Solution (e.g. restrictive covenants).

M_Young,

That’s a ‘solution’ only if you don’t care at all about the welfare of the Black communities, and only care about optimizing the welfare of the white ones.

If you move to a different place, you should be prepared to adapt and shouldn’t try to change the people who live there. If a Northern family moved to Louisiana, I suspect they’d put some backs up if they made fun of Southerners who called elders sir and ma’am, for instance. People in the Midwest don’t usually use ma’am unless they’re calling for some strange woman who just forgot her purse or they’re being sarcastic. People are going to draw attention in Nebraska if they are too loud or too flashy or too emotional or make too much of a fuss. I can imagine all too well what is said behind closed doors in that town about the parents and Smoky. I have been stopped and ticketed for going seven miles over the speed limit. Why shouldn’t people be stopped if they break the law?

True Hector, there is a great deal we don’t know here. It seems the Wa Po reporter didn’t really dig very deep, and perhaps that should be the first point.

Working in a sandwich shop, after all, requires pretty strict adherence to rules to ensure that people don’t get sick.

True. Suppose the sandwich shop was a worker owned co-op. It would still be subject to outside inspection by a big had federal or state bureaucracy charged with making sure that all the comrade worker customers were getting healthy nutritious food, and this co-op wasn’t going rogue and trying to make a little extra by cutting corners. (For those who don’t recognize it, as I think Hector does, the choice of words is deliberately tongue in cheek). 🙂

On the other hand, Smokey would have the opportunity at the weekly meeting to offer the benefit of his training and propose that provolone would be healthier, tastier, and more popular with customers, who would even be willing to pay a dime more for the better sandwich.

Smokey doesn’t have experience with the finesse of offering a valuable suggestion to a supervisor. There are ways to state it effectively, and ways to totally blow it by being full of yourself, generally received as rank insubordination.

If you move to a different place, you should be prepared to adapt and shouldn’t try to change the people who live there.

You shouldn’t try to change the people who live there… but on the other hand, the people who live there shouldn’t expect the newcomer to instantly and perfectly conform to “the way we all do things.” There are limits to that… driving 80 miles per hour in a 55 mile per hour zone is not a reasonable accommodation… although natives of my state do it all the time, its not particularly an outsider thing.

You can put up with people who fail to say sir or ma’am all the time, without putting up with them making fun of you for the way you talk. Etc.

The more I think about this though, I think that the father coming down with a serious cancer has a lot to do with why things didn’t go so well for the family… Maybe if FEMA sends someone to a nice rural community and then they get cancer and need expensive treatment and can’t hold a job, FEMA should step in and help sort out how his care will be paid for.

Nebraskans are generous folk, shirt off their back type folk. HOWEVER, while we will give generously, we are used to our own kind and expect a return of sorts. If the family down the road has their house and crops destroyed by a tornado and we get together to help them rebuild, we expect that they will be back on their feet. The people accepting the help will, first of all, be deeply embarrassed/ashamed that they have to be helped in the first place but they will bust ass to make sure that hand up will be put to good use and will be itching to pay it forward to the next folks that need something.

The town drunk or wife beater isn’t looked on kindly, as are any other sort that wants to just sit around and try to live off the dole. Same, or maybe even worse for someone they welcome in and can’t get it together. It’s gotten worse since I left with the meth heads and other assorted shameless deadbeats who simply weren’t around when I was growing up.

Also, I don’t know how that town is (I’ve only been through a few times) but I know I was a whole hell of a lot less eager to assume badly of someone with race being a contributing factor when I was in my little town versus actually having lived in areas with significant minority populations. I’ve also met some salt of the earth minority folks, no doubt, but I’ve seen the stereotypes aren’t just BS. Also, the casual racism (that’s probably not the right word) is much more prevalent in the city versus back home. Mention N. Omaha and that’s usually followed by cracks about baby daddies, welfare checks and getting shot.

Good on the daughter though. It looks like she benefitted quite a bit from the move, good for her.

How long is FEMA supposed to be responsible for their misfortunes? These are American adults, not refugees from some foreign country. At some point there is a responsibility to hold down a job, apply for services that might be available, leave the state to look for other opportunities, etc.

Dominic is right about how people in Nebraska probably viewed their help to this family. North Dakotans are the same way. Help is given, but people are supposed to get back on their feet, get it together and help someone else the next time there is a disaster. Appearing in the police blotter, getting fired, not paying bills, being difficult with the school, etc., would not endear them in the community.

“Smokey doesn’t have experience with the finesse of offering a valuable suggestion to a supervisor. There are ways to state it effectively, and ways to totally blow it by being full of yourself, generally received as rank insubordination.”

Correct. And there are probably a number of people who would happily accept Smokey’s job who DO know how to follow work directions and appropriately communicate their ideas for improvement. It is not the responsibility of the owner of a sandwich shop to change an employee’s deeply embedded, negative attitudes and correct his lack of the most basic protocol in human relations. Businesses deal with a competitive job market comprised of many good, experienced, willing people who need a job as much as Smokey. I’d hire one of them since a business owner does not have the time or emotional energy to deal with rank insubordination and the toll it takes on both customer service and the morale of the other employees who are expected to follow work orders.

More on the cheese rebellion:
1) Some people, myself included, actually like American cheese.
2) On some sandwiches, “better” cheese might not actually work with the other ingredients.
3) Provolone is more expensive than American cheese.
4) When I go to my favorite sandwich shop, I order based on what I know. I would not want an employee to change the ingredients based on their own taste or opinions.
5) When you’ve established credibility, there might come a time where you can express a contrary opinion, respectfully, to your boss. Being a smart-ass after recently being hired is not the way to go.

Andrea and Bernie, you are both being awfully obtuse spouting abstract truisms.

How long is FEMA responsible? Well, if FEMA sends what seems to be an able-bodied adult out of town, and then the able-bodied adult is stricken with a serious cancer, posing a significant financial burden to a small, cash-strapped, rural health system… that might be cause for FEMA to assist in arranging appropriate coverage. He may not be the most photogenic candidate for disability, but the man probably can’t do much work and he doesn’t have insurance and in New Orleans he might have been on Medicaid or he might have just died. But he’s in Auburn, Nebraska. FEMA wanted as many of these people out of N.O. as possible as fast as possible to solve their problem for them and lighten their work load. Why dump it all on Auburn?

At some point there is a responsibility to hold down a job, apply for services that might be available, leave the state to look for other opportunities, etc.

Well, the local values may be what dominic says, but, what the new arrivals were told was ““We’re a close community that leaves no one behind in a time of need. You’ll be taken care of here.” Millions of Americans are in no position to leave the state looking for other opportunities, and I expect these were some of the least equipped to do so. That bait-and-switch with the van probably put a chip on the shoulder of the entire family — as many have pointed out.

There should be SOMEONE who can sit down with Smokey and explain things that probably he never had any reason to think of in any previous life experience. That’s part of what it takes to pull people out of a cultural cess-pit. If I were Smokey’s employer, I might do that myself. I’ve spent a lifetime studying miscommunication in every workplace I’ve encountered. Its awful, in most workplaces, for all kinds of reasons. A lot of stress, anger, inefficiency, and a fair amount of termination, could be avoided by some sober, temperate attention to fixing communication and information flow. By and large, I’ve found managers either don’t have the patience to stop and think about it, or are under too much misguided ignorant pressure from THEIR superiors to think their way clear to trying.

But that is what’s needed. “Look, Smokey, you’ve gotten this certificate, and the people who taught you your craft told you this is the way to do it, and now you’ve got a job working for someone who runs their business differently. That’s dynamite waiting to explode. It really is. Nobody is thinking any too clearly, and nobody is communicating and nobody is listening, including you. So, tell you what, do it the way he tells you, because its his business, its what his customers are used to, and at the end of the day when he’s got a minute to breath, I’ll ask him about sitting down together and talking about what you’re saying.”

Considering what Andrea Williams’s role was in her community back in New Orleans, she could have a much more useful role in Auburn, it just needs to be transitioned to fit into the flow in Auburn. That’s a big “just” but Auburn could benefit from it. That is where she could “help someone else the next time there is a disaster.” Starting, perhaps, with the poor souls native to Auburn who live in the same housing project.

Not giving up on people is not the same thing as laying down in the street and letting them walk all over you. There are ways to cultivate people in difficult, stressful circumstances, and ways to rebuff and undermine them and render them sullen and difficult.

“Andrea and Bernie, you are both being awfully obtuse spouting abstract truisms.”

Siarlys, I don’t even know what you mean. I worked in HR for 28 years for an organization with 65,000 employees. My world was far from “abstract truisms”, as my daily job was handling human problems in the workplace.

What I mean Bernie is that you are looking down your nose, and down the mountain, from the lofty heights of “our standard protocols,” without considering, is there in this difficult lump of flesh some humanity to be redeemed, and if so, what would be the most effective way to redeem it?

I’m sorry to refer to the Williams’s in quite those terms, but I’m trying to meet your prejudices half way. I’m also trying to say, it is not necessary to cater to anti-social behavior in order to recognize that there are ways to WORK WITH what someone’s life experiences (as well as their own genes and choices) have made of them, and get a better result for all concerned.

I don’t, I must say, have much respect for modern HR departments and practices. They by and large deal with human beings as equipment, to be assigned or disposed of as suits the needs of the company, not as human beings to be brought into association. Aside from the moral dimensions, HR departments by their blind indifference waste a great deal of human potential, and create great inefficiency in the operation of the company. They need to ask some of the rank and file more often.

If I sound bitter, my five years in the transportation industry was a quiet study in preventible dysfunction.

As for what else I mean… well, you responded to one line, without responding at all to the meat of what I wrote to expound on that one line. Read, and try again.

Siarlys, I’m genuinely sorry you’ve had such a difficult experience with HR – many people have and I’m acutely aware of it. In my years of service I tried very hard, on a routine basis, to help all employees, regardless of job title, education, or rank.

You misjudge me badly if you think my attitude has been one of not trying to help all employees succeed and find satisfaction and happiness in their jobs. I’ll say, with humility, that if you questioned my fellow HR employees and the thousands of those I served, I think you would find this to be true. I certainly tried.

Here’s the thing…there comes a time when all of a supervisor’s guidance, role-modeling, mentoring, etc., has limitations in terms of work time and energy. Supervisors, in spite of their best efforts, sometimes cannot change the work ethic, attitudes, etc., of an employee. When an employee requires an inordinate amount of special attention, he doesn’t serve his clients well or appropriately, and he has an adverse effect on the morale of his fellow employees, it’s time to consider replacing him.

A good supervisor, as part of his consideration of the well-being and growth of all his employees, cannot let one “problem” employee consume all his time. The other employees are watching…and often have to take up the slack and endure the complaints generated by the poor employee. A supervisor needs to consider the greater good, not just the good of one weak employee. Much misery and trouble exist in the workplace because supervisors do not face up to problem employees. At some point, a supervisor’s accommodation of these employees’ needs changes from a good thing to a negative one. Clients suffer and all the other employees suffer. Sometimes what may seem to be a noble effort to rehabilitate a needy employee, ultimately results in harm to a number of others. My point is this: we need to know where to draw the line for the greater good.

Here’s the thing…there comes a time when all of a supervisor’s guidance, role-modeling, mentoring, etc., has limitations in terms of work time and energy. Supervisors, in spite of their best efforts, sometimes cannot change the work ethic, attitudes, etc., of an employee.

All perfectly true. I guess what I’m saying is that it doesn’t seem that in Smokey’s case, anyone has really tried to help him succeed and find satisfaction and happiness in his job — but a number of people have offered boiler plate commentary on what is the standard disposition.

Now I will be the first to say that Smokey would at best be a hard case, and could be a lost cause. I’ve known many people who in some manner resemble Smokey. He looks at the world a certain way, and getting him to stop and think another way is going to be a difficult proposition at best. His mode of thinking does need to change — its not all his boss’s fault. Further, unlike the paterfamilias who was diagnosed with cancer, Smokey is not really FEMA’s responsibility. FEMA didn’t send him to Auburn, he went there dodging a bullet, because he had kin there he could move in with.

But I wouldn’t write him off by pronouncing a summary sentence on the duties of workers to their employer either. Partly, I wouldn’t write him off because I’ve spent most of my life finding ways to reach hard cases like Smokey. Also, trying to think of myself as a resident of Auburn, well, he’s there, the community would be better off finding a way to resolve this rather than giving him a figurative punch in the jaw and hoping it teaches him a lesson — I know the lesson it would, subjectively, teach him. “See, the white folks are all out to get me.”

I can make as good a case as any that this is not so, but I understand how events convey that to him. If “It is not the responsibility of the owner of a sandwich shop to change an employee’s deeply embedded, negative attitudes and correct his lack of the most basic protocol in human relations,” then why did you “try very hard, on a routine basis, to help all employees, regardless of job title, education, or rank”?

But I guess the reason this rankles is that WaPo, and our gracious host, and innumerable commenters, have tried to draw general conclusions about the meaning of life and the human condition from this family’s experience… and I see a good deal that could be done that would deliver a different outcome. I’m not blaming Auburn. They tried to do the right thing in the fact of a disaster, did what seemed right as they were able to understand it, and didn’t have the background or skill set to handle it better. Likewise, the Williams family didn’t have all the skills needed to do well in Auburn. And there was nobody able and willing to close the gap. But I think it could be done.